Still in Des Moines!!

Meow,

News Flash: I am staying in Des Moines and will die here as a trainer! The Lord has blessed me with an opportunity to train a new Hermana and greenie bust Hermana Hepworth..we will be in a three-some. We are starting our new biking gang in Des Moines. J We will be driving to Iowa City to pick up my new girl. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here another transfer. This means I will have two areas my whole mission! Crazy. I love it though, because I have gotten to know the people very well in Sioux City and here. We went on the “going home” temple trip. It was lots of fun. Sister Guthrie was able to come, so I was happy about that. We had a huge group that came, about 15 missionaries! Church went well on Sunday. We helped out with Primary and the lesson was on the First Presidency of the Church. It was really cute helping the kids pronounce Uchtdorf over and over again.

The area is doing well. This Sunday Jose Rubio will be baptized. We are excited about that! We hope that his wife in Mexico is overreacting and doesn’t really want a divorce. Hermano Serrano who has a baptismal date for the 13th of November fell into his drinking again. We havent been able to see him because his wife says he has been drunk. This is really sad to us...but we have faith that he can stop the addiction and follow the word of wisdom. He was doing very well. We were able to do service for Gladis this week! We just love her so much. We had a very intense lesson with her and Eder the other night. We were explaining how God is a just and merciful God, and we can show that we love Him by following the commandments. We explained that our Savior has suffered for us, and we watched the Lamb of God. The Spirit was really strong...I cried as I bore my testimony of the love of God and Christ and the only way to show them we love them is by keeping the commandments and repenting/ changing. Probably the hardest thing on my mission is seeing the potential in families and children of God, but them not seeing the big picture. I want them to progress and accept it so badly, but if they are not willing to change or do what they need to they wont receive the blessings. We aren’t giving up on Gladis and Eder yet even though Eder is not ready to live the Law of Chastity. Gladis has expressed many times her desire to be married and baptized, but he is holding her back. We are going to continue to be patient with him, because he has progressed. This week he expressed to us that he recognized his faith after having a trial with his family. He is realizing how important it is to have God in his life, so we see light at the end of the tunnel. His mindset towards marriage is twisted because of the attitude of the world. We are attempting to help him see the benefits of marriage and the peace it will bring. Yeah, hard times will come but with the help of Christ they will be strengthened. Anyways..we finally started the Stop smoking program with Arut and Guadalupe, but then we went and checked up on them and they gave in to temptation. They hadnt bought the supplies yet for the program so he committed to restarting it. They want to be free of that addiction, because their children will be coming here from Mexico! They want to get married once their children are back (hopefully end of November) and if they feel prepared they want to be baptized. We see real potential with them and are showing them our support. The Lord has blessed us with lots of new investigators and we are excited to help them progress. Our favorites are Wendy, Maria & Miguel and Maria & Mony. Wendy is a Christian from El Salvador..married with really cute twin boys, excited to learn! Maria is an amazing Mexican mom that takes care of her autistic son (Miguel, 27) all the time. We just love their family. We hope that we can continue seeing them. While teaching Maria, Miguel kept screaming that he wanted all kinds of food, so Guthrie and I joked “that’s just like Hermana Murphy (I like to eat)” Then right after we said that he farted really loud. End of Story. Bahahaha Mony remembers being baptized in our church in Mexico. We are going to search for her records..her daughter Maria (16) is really nice and starting reading in the BOM. She is going to come and do service with us, since we do it once a week. She needs service hours for high school. Those are some of the fun people we met this week. Heavenly Father keeps putting great people in our path…

The branch is holding out strong. J The Gomez Family (our branch president and his family) are going to the Nauvoo Temple Saturday to be sealed for all time and eternity. Wahoo!

Those are most of the updates. I could type forever and ever. I will just tell you more once I am home. Don’t worry. I am focused on the work, Heavenly Father is helping me! I love the work so much. I only have one trunky thing to say, my ASU women’s volleyball team beat UCLA and USC! Go Sundevils!



Con Amor,

La Hermana Murphy